THAT'S F*CKING IT...THE KID GETS NO TV
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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231249_television05.html

TV -- any TV -- harms toddlers, study claims
Reading, memory adversely affected, UW researchers say

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

By JULIE DAVIDOW
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Any TV is bad TV for children under 3.

That's the message of a new study from researchers at the University of Washington who found that toddler time spent in front of the television translates into lower reading and short-term memory scores at 6 and 7 years old.

"Watching even really good educational shows ... is bad" for children under 3, said Frederick Zimmerman, co-director of the Child Health Institute and lead author of the study published today in the Journal of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Older children, however, did glean some benefits from watching a mix of educational and non-educational shows.

Zimmerman and his co-author, Dr. Dimitri Christakis, have published several studies looking at the effect of television viewing on young minds. They've linked too much television to bullying and attention problems.

As in the previous studies, their most recent analysis relies on mothers' responses to a national survey for about 1,800 children. Children younger than 3 watched an average of 2.2 hours of television a day; the daily average increased to 3.3 hours for children between 3 and 5.

For each hour of television watched per day before age 3, a child's reading comprehension and short-term memory scores fell at age 6 and 7.

But for older children, every hour of television led to slightly better performance sounding out and pronouncing words.

Since 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended no television for children 2 and younger, including educational shows. For older children, the academy suggests no more than one to two hours a day of "quality" television.

"This is the fairly landmark study that says, 'Parents, there's something to this notion,' " said Dr. Donald Shifrin, a Bellevue pediatrician and chairman of the communications committee at the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Educational shows, such as "Blue's Clues" and "Sesame Street," are designed for older children who have already mastered the basics of language, Zimmerman said.

Younger children can't benefit from those programs, he said.

"They're trying to recognize sounds consistently and reproduce them accurately," Zimmerman said. "The way they do that is to interact with adults and look at their faces, lips and mouths."

An adult's reaction when a child repeats a sound or word -- something television doesn't offer -- is an important part of that learning process, Zimmerman said.

Grant Haven and his partner, John, keep track of their 4-year-old daughter's screen time on a wall calendar.

"It keeps us honest," Haven said.

Grace has a whole library of Disney videos, but she's only allowed to watch them in half-hour segments. As young as 9 months, Haven said, she was glued to the tube during "Teletubbies" episodes.

The West Seattle couple don't want the television to be a focal point of their lives or Grace's day. They keep the set in the guest bedroom "to make it a very special event when she goes to watch it."

The latest issue of the Journal of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine includes two additional studies related to television and children. A study from New Zealand found that the more midweek television that teenagers watched, the less likely they were to finish college. The other found that third-graders with television sets in their rooms scored lower on standardized tests.

But Ariel Chernin, a doctoral candidate in communications at the University of Pennsylvania and author of an accompanying editorial, said the three articles pay too little attention to the types of shows children are watching. "Whether or not you have a 2-year-old who's watching 'Sesame Street' or a 2-year-old watching 'Law and Order' -- those are two very different things."

ON THE WEB
For the American Academy of Pediatrics' media guidelines for parents, including recommendations for computer and television time, go to: www.aap.org

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